Pictures from the 2018 Comic-Con International, part 4 (Thursday, 7/19)

Here are some more pictures from Thursday at Comic-Con 2018! I almost split these up one more time because I still had a lot from this day. But we will get through them all! Let's begin!

Midway through the day, I left the convention hall to make my way to an offsite event. The weather was pretty agreeable this year overall, especially for the first half of the convention. So I crossed the train tracks and headed toward the Gaslamp District!

Disenchantment got more advertising outside and across the street.

My destination was the Hard Rock Hotel, where another Rotten Tomatoes panel was taking place. This was a new venue for the event, and one closer to the convention center than in 2017.

People were lining up to get inside! I was happy to see it. I was a little early, so I decided to walk around a bit more before going inside.

And so I saw this Rampage display! Rampage was already in theaters by this time, so why were they advertising here? Maybe they already had the George the gorilla statue and decided to get some more use out of it? Maybe they were advertising for the eventual digital download? Maybe they just really wanted to have a display at Comic-Con? Who can say?

I do not know anything about this show. But Here's a giant fork for you.

Soon it was time to head back into the Hard Rock hall for the Rotten Tomatoes: Your Opinion Sucks! panel. This year's panel was even more streamlined and polished than ever.

One of the special guests this year was...Rob Liefeld, co-creator of Deadpool? Even though there's the obvious movie tie-in, it's nice to see a comic professional get the spotlight at an event.

Naturally, I'm thrilled that everything seems to be going well for Rotten Tomatoes in general, and Grae Drake specifically. Grae is a great person and it's exciting to see her become the face of the brand. Other than, I mean, the giant tomato.

I made another comic print for the panel this year. Will I show you all what it is? Yes, I will. In a bit.

After the panel, I ran back to the convention hall for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 signing. That's a really nice Tom Servo!

Dark Horse is producing an MST3K comic, which is out right now, actually. At the booth were Felicia Day, Todd Nauck and Michael Heisler, all of whom signed prints and promotional copies of the first issue. Is Heisler wearing a Totino's t-shirt? How does one...find something like that?

I recognize one character from this group, but I guess that's good enough.

After the show ended, I took a trip to the back of the convention hall. That's a Mayans ad draped over the Hilton.

I was kind of ambivalent about The Fifth Element the first time I saw it. But I've come to really enjoy it since. Not a bad leopard-print costume, sir.

Archer is a mainstay at this location.

Here's a shot of the harbor during what is apparently the golden hour.

Yep, the golden hour. It was a nice night to walk around after the show.

Adult Swim had a summer camp theme for their main outdoor attraction this year. It was way too crowded to enter on this particular night, but I got a good look inside, at any rate.

The canoe racing looked particularly fun.

Crossing the bridge, I saw (and probably scared) Kevin McDonald, from Kids in the Hall and Seinfeld!

Among the hundreds of thousands of people in and around Comic-Con, I always somehow manage to blindly run into Perry Zombolas every year. Perry is an all-around great guy, and he's also a storyboard artist on Bob's Burgers and now Disenchantment!

I capped the night off by checking out the Star Trek: Mirror Universe exhibit in the Gaslamp District! This small offsite had costumes and other items, mostly from the first season of Star Trek: Discovery!

The Mirror Universe is a fun concept, and I didn't expect Discovery to dive so deeply into the lore in its first season.

In the merchandise room, of all places, the walls were lined with original art from IDW's Star Trek: The Next Generation: Broken Mirror comic book series! All of the pages were on sale as well!

And that was finally the end of the night for me. It was a packed Thursday and a great start to the convention. More pictures to come soon!

Pictures from the 2013 Comic-Con International, part 5 (Patrick Warburton, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Walking Dead Escape, Joss Whedon at Nerd HQ and more!)

Here's some downright presidential pictures from Friday and into Saturday of this year's Comic-Con!  Let's get to it.

The gentleman above not only bore a striking resemblance to our current President of the United States, but he surrounded himself with fake Secret Servicemen as well.  Here he is with equally impressive Supermen (even if I hate that New 52 costume) and Captain Marvel.

Friday brought a signing at the Tick booth with Ben Edlund.  A healthy number of fans showed up to meet Ben, and this guy brought a spot-on reproduction of the Little Wooden Boy from an episode of the cartoon.  I wanted to get a picture of it, and Ben just kind of slowly leaned in while I was framing the shot.  Afterwards, Ben asked something to the effect of "was I not supposed to be in the picture?"  But if you're Ben Edlund, you do what you gotta do.  And I'm happy to oblige.

Later on in the day, Patrick Warburton, he of the live-action Tick series as well as the Venture Bros. and Seinfeld, stopped by for a few minutes.  I was lucky enough to get to say hello and I'm happy to say that I only did a minimum of gushing while he was around.  What a treat it was to meet this guy who is a part of so many of my favorite television programs!  In my hand I'm holding the Comic-Con exclusive Brock Samson figure, which he was kind enough to sign for me.

There were a number of celebrity sightings on Friday and Saturday, and I was able to snap a picture with more than my share, which was really fun.  While walking outside of the convention center, I spotted Christopher Mintz-Plasse, of Superbad and Kick Ass fame, walking casually in the other direction.  There were hundreds of other people around, but no one else seemed to notice.  If this took place anywhere else, I probably would have figured that I had spied someone who simply looked uncannily like Mintz-Plasse, but since this was Comic-Con, I caught up to him and asked him for a picture, to which he kindly obliged.  For some reason, I forgot all about how to snap a picture on my iPhone (wilting under pressure, let's call it what it is), but he said "I got this" and took the photo himself.  Thanks, dude.

Yes!  SPAAAACE GHOOOOOST!!

Notice the tiny cameo by Hypnotoad.  These were great, simple costumes.

After the show ended on Friday, and as people poured out of the convention center, I saw a veritable comic celebrity in the person of Rob Liefeld talking to who I assume were his sons.  Rob is such a firebrand within the comics community.  It was fun to say hello and he was gracious enough to take a picture with me.

Friday was one probably the longest day of the five for me, as I woke up before 5:00 am, stayed at the convention the entire day and had a few things planned for the evening.  I was pretty tired by the time the show let out, but the Walking Dead Escape at Petco Park was on the list and I wasn't about to let it slip on by.  In 2012, I had considered running the obstacle course filled with the undead, but the event closed shortly after the convention center closed, and I was never able to get a ticket in time.  This year, the event stayed open later into the evening and I snatched up a ticket for the evening.  Here's a nice picture of a zombie on a cell phone.

The event was a lot of fun - I hear that the zombies were a lot more docile than the year before, in which a few people got banged up a bit from the high-intensity chase.  Even so, it was a challenge filled with half an hour of running, climbing, dodging and crawling...still very intense.  I made it through the course winded but mostly intact, though I did stumble over a road block, wiping out onto the cement concourse of the baseball stadium.  I think I ended up scaring the event staff (and nearby zombies) with my fall more than anything else, which was kind of funny.

In the above picture, I'm climbing over one of the larger obstacles in the course.  I've got the easy-to-spot yellow hat on.

This picture is particularly spooky.  The light in the background makes it look like I've got a skeleton arm.

After some much needed rest, we got up on Saturday morning and headed back to Petco Park for the Nerd HQ Joss Whedon panel.  We were lucky to get tickets to this event and were excited to make it to the enclosed section of the baseball stadium; you can see the field in the background!

Joss Whedon came out and put on a great show.  He talked about Firefly, Avengers, SHIELD...all the hits.

As an added treat, Nathan Fillion served as moderator for the event!  What a treat.  Nerd HQ really outdid themselves this year, as they provided an experience seamlessly complementary to Comic-Con.  They provided, I think, a little glimpse of what Comic-Con will become in the years ahead: not only will the convention center continue to host great, gigantic events, but outside attractions such as this will become more elaborate and more involved.  You could have spent a few days at Nerd HQ with all of the various events and you wouldn't have gotten bored.  This will get as big as Nerd HQ wants it to.

As we were leaving the panel, we ran into this photo shoot taking place.

And here we have some early promotions for the upcoming X-Men movie!

It's not Comic-Con without at least one guy dressing up as Galactus.

Pretty neat.

After making our way back to the convention center to get in line, we saw this Khal Drogo coming our way.  This guy certainly has the face and the eyes for the part.

I'll stop here as I've got a number of pictures to show from the panel we stood in line for!  Which panel was it?  Come back and find out!  Okay, it's the Tick panel.  You forced it out of me.